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Cats and the Ecosystem - Page 2

© Kenneth Friedman

Although the sometime war against feral cats is often a losing one, wildlife researchers, on Australia's Macquarie Island believe they have won back the island by hunting down feral cat number 2,450 after an 86-hour, half-a-million-dollar search in June 2000. If there is a remaining cat, it will be hunted down by team using tracker dogs. According to an article in The Sydney Morning Herald, July 27, 2001, cats, which were brought to the island by colonists evolved to become twice the size of house cats. As their population grew, they killed an estimated 60,000 birds a year, which caused extinction of a native parakeet and forced some seabirds to nest elsewhere. Once the cats were exterminated, seabirds began top return.

Australians aren't the only ones who don't like feral cats. Bird lovers everywhere dislike outdoor cats too. You can read about the cat controversy in the links listed below. For our part, we never really had a choice about whether Tiger was going to be an outside cat or not. He landed on our doorstep as a very young kitten and from day one demonstrated his preference for "going outside." Double meaning there--he never used a litter box unless snow was three-feet deep. Otherwise, neither rain nor temperature affected his preference to be outside, although as he got older he slept in more during the day. There was simply no way to control his occasional bird conquest-we saw feathers once and awhile but not often. We saw more chipmunks and rabbits.

Just how great an effect Tiger had on the neighborhood rabbit population will remain a mystery. Two days after I wrote this article, Tiger sauntered onto our deck looking quite skinny and weighing well below what a veterinarian's wall poster says is a healthy cat. No visible bruises, no fleas, a little tar in one paw, still skittish--and famished. He probably has ear mites. Despite his skill at hunting, he obviously didn't do well over the two and a half months he was gone. While we don't know if he will stay home for good, so far he has become an indoor cat-good for the environment. I still must face the hoard of rabbits.

What to read about cats and the environment?

Cats - Myths, Facts and Other Considerations", by Frankie Seymour.

Annotated Bibliography of Papers and Studies on the Subject of Feral Cats in Australia, by Frankie Seymour.

Cats, by Susan Roney Drennan, Vice President for Ornithology, National Audubon Society.

The copyright of the article Cats and the Ecosystem - Page 2 in Environment is owned by Kenneth Friedman. Permission to republish Cats and the Ecosystem - Page 2 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.